2014 Pro Wrestling Thread

But if Giant was Andre's son, why didn't he speak in a French accent?

 

Tonight, I'd like to share my ode to the mullets of WCW Monday Nitro 1995. It was a time of grunge, Tarantino was the hot new name in Hollywood, but wrestling was still hopelessly trapped in the 1980s in every way: Zubaz pants, fanny packs, and mullets.

First, let me begin with a personal favorite, Lex Luger's mullet from an episode of Alexander Salkind's "The Adventures of Superboy" from circa 1988-89.


Keeping with Luger, he rocked that blond mullet through most of the 1990s, when the hair style had long fallen out of fashion.


Although Eddie and Dean would eventually defect to WWF together five years later, only Eddie was man enough to leave it long in the back.


Before he was the Loose Cannon, Brian Pillman sported some tight curls for his mullet, making up for Double A's folliclely challenged dome.


Holy shit, is that Phil Collins? Despite looking like he walked off the 1987 Genesis world tour, Chris Benoit made his WCW debut by stepping out of a black limo, looking dapper from the neck down, and proclaiming, "WCW ... so this is where the big boys play." At least he didn't try to tell us the verb "play" is an adjective.

As Lionheart Chris Jericho might say, this mullet has been stricken from the record and no longer exists.

 

Hence, why wrestling sucked.

But it's also illustrates how wrestling in general and the E in particular have changed their target audiences. In the 80s, the were targeting kids. By the late 90s, those kids had grown up in their late teens and early 20s and wanted a product with a harder edge. Now, those kids have kids of their own, and are looking for a family-friendly product.

Which means that ECW, Version III, is due around 2022.

 

Because Andre lived in America and The Giant grew up here? Of all the holes you could poke in that storyline, a French accent is the one that gives you the most pause?

Here's a video with Andre's real daughter:

http://www.break.com/video/ugc/andre-the-giants-daughter-962888

Amazingly, no French accent.

 

Oh, I know.

10-year-old me still believed wrestling was real, that everything about it wasn't staged. I have my grandpa to thank for that, because he was the same way.

Wrestling did suck in the early to mid 90s, but I still loved it.

 

Hey guys,

Sorry for my absence. Something personal happened to me last Christmas, and it took me a while to get through it. Still fighting through it.

Thought I may as well start off my "comeback" with a Pay Per View review.

Fall Brawl
September 17, 1995



Eddie Guerrero vs Alex Wright - WCW Main Event - Sept 17, 1995
WCW Main Event was the weekly Sunday show that served as a PPV preview once a month. No desire to watch the full episode, but I wanted to watch this match as it's Eddie Guerrero's WCW TV debut~! Guerrero comes out to the theme that would eventually belong to Juventud Guerrera. Eric Bischoff even gets in a mention of Eddie's wife, Vickie, and their two daughters. To think, one day, two of those would end up working for the WWE. It's a fun, albeit spotty match that goes back and forth from some mat work and bigger spots like dives. For some inexplicable reason, Guerrero is really over. I don't get it. The show is taking place from Ashville, North Carolina. So I don't imagine there's a large Hispanic demographic. In addition, ECW hadn't even ran a single show in North Carolina at that point, so how does anyone in the building even know who Guerrero is? Guerrero has some impressive moves including a Splash Mountain and pimps the Gory Special. In the end, Guerrero picked Wright up in a suplex, but they both fell over the top rope. Guerrero would bang his knee badly on the steel steps and be unable to get back into the ring. Being a babyface, Wright stops the referee from counting Guerrero out and instead we get a no contest while Wright helps Guerrero up. In just one match, Guerrero proved he was better than nearly the entire WCW undercard. If only other talented workers could come into WCW... ** 3/4

~PPV~

Brian Pillman vs Johnny B. Badd - #1 Contender's Match
WCW sure did love #1 contender's matches at this point. In this case, the winner gets a future US Title shot against Sting. However, earlier on the Main Event, The American Males won a match over the Nasty Boys to get a match against the Blue Bloods tomorrow night on Nitro. Why? Because WCW LOVED #1 contender's matches~! This match doesn't receive a lot of attention, but the attention it does receive is really high praise. Somehow it's both a hidden gem and an overrated match. My problem is that it's slow going with a lot of rest holds that were just there to drag the match out longer. I'm not impressed by the fact that they went to the twenty minute time limit and then had a near ten minute sudden death. There is plenty to enjoy though. Pillman went into the match with his babyface attitude beginning to change. With Badd getting a cut above the eye early in the match, Pillman kept going after the cut, trying to make it worse. Pillman did a lot of little things to get booed by the fans without actually turning heel. With this being 1995, it felt special that both men were dishing out all of their big moves, but the opponent kept kicking out. You didn't know who was going to win nor did you know when it would. The final element to the match was the similar styles of both men. Several times in the match, they attempted the same move at the same time. In fact, the match ended with both men attempting a running cross body. For Badd, he managed to land on top of Pillman to score the pinfall. It may not be great, but there was a lot of effort being shown and you have to remember how terrible the undercard scene in WCW was at this point. This was far above average, even if the select few praises it too much. *** 1/2



Sgt. Craig Pitbull Pittman vs The Cobra
It's your classic evil Marine vs babyface secret spy CIA member feud. The Cobra is best known for playing the nWo Sting. While the Cobra made his entrance, Pittman was nowhere to be found. One of his privates came out to get into an argument with The Cobra. That allows Pittman to repel from the rafters and sneak attack Cobra. It's a nothing match with Cobra winning quickly with Code Red (Cross Armbreaker). The fans do not care at all and this is a prime example of the type of terrible wrestling from unover talent that polluted the undercard scene in 1995. 3/4 *

Rather than explain the next segment, I'll just show you. Words do not do it justice.

The Renegade (c) w/Jimmy Hart vs DDP w/Diamond Doll & Maxx Muscle - WCW TV Title
To think, it was just a couple of years ago that the TV Title was ruled by the likes of Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Barry Windham and Steven Regal. Other than a few bright spots over the years since this, the Renegade winning the TV Title was truly the beginning of the decline of the title's importance. With that being said, for a Renegade match, this was pretty decent. Naturally, it has nothing to do with the Renegade though. DDP went into the match in an overselling mood. Page kept tripping over his own feet, inflicting more damage on himself than Renegade as doing to him. The commentators tried to tell a story about how this was The Renegade's longest match yet, which is testing him like never before. In what shouldn't surprise anyone, this wasn't Renegade's longest match. In fact, his last major title defense at Clash of the Champions 31 was longer. It's when Muscle begins bullying Hart that Renegade loses his focus on Page. After diving to the outside on Muscle, Renegade tried getting back into the ring, but he was tripped up by Muscle. That allowed Page to jump up and hit the Diamond Cutter to surprise everyone and win his first championship in WCW. Taking the belt off of one fail of an untalented WrestleCrap performer and putting it around the waist of an unover lowcard heel isn't exactly an upgrade for the title. ** 1/2



Bunkhouse Buck and Dick Slater (c) w/Col. Parker vs Harlem Heat w/Sister Sherri - WCW Tag Titles
Ugh. Whose idea was it to have this never ending feud with two heel teams? Somehow, these two teams were given seventeen minutes to wrestle, none of which were over with the crowd. Booker T played the heel-in-peril for a long time while the fans sat in silence. There's a good amount of cheating from the champions to make Harlem Heat the one night only faces. By the end, the love angle between Sherri and Parker messes up the ending as the camera spends too much time on Sherri crawling in the second ring to get to Parker. They make out while the camera briefly goes back to the first ring to see the Nasty Boys running in. According to the commentary, the Nasty Boys used Buck's own boot to knock him out to allow Harlem Heat to win the match and their third WCW Tag Team Titles. The tag team title division in 1995 was so horrible that the WWE's looked great in comparison, despite having their own weaknesses. With WCW freshening up their tag team scene after this, Buck and Slater would be depushed into becoming a pair of JTTS before they'd eventually leave the company. 1/2 *

Just to show how bad the WCW tag team division was at this time, the tag titles wouldn't be defended on PPV again until Superbrawl VI.

Ric Flair vs Arn Anderson
The match you never thought you'd see! The idea here is that ever since Hulk Hogan arrived, Flair has been having a lot of bad luck and it's caused him to go a little crazy. He's been relying on Anderson too much and it's all just pushed Anderson too far. Now Anderson is upset at being taken advantage of while Flair is upset that Arn doesn't like to party like he used to. In a nice touch, WCW had a bunch of undercard wrestlers take seats in the first row to put over how interesting of a match up this is. Such wrestlers include The American Males, Brian Pillman and Eddie Guerrero, who was making his first appearance on PPV. There's a lot to enjoy about this match. Early on, Anderson worked over the arm in a throw back to how the Andersons used to operate as a tag team. At various points in the match, Anderson does little things that shows beneath the respect, there's some legitimate issues with Anderson slapping and spitting at Flair. Naturally, Flair does what the Nature Boy does and he gives Anderson a low blow. Bobby Heenan may not receive much praise for his time in WCW actually does a great job commentating this. He's noticeably heart broken at having to see these two fight. The second half is all about Flair working over the knee of Anderson to set up the Figure Four. The Figure Four spot is great since the commentators are going crazy about how this must hurt Flair to be risking breaking Anderson's leg while Flair is punching at Anderson's knee. When Anderson refuses to sell the hold anymore, Flair spits at him in frustration before Anderson turns the hold over. The ending is likely not very popular, but I feel as if it worked. Instead of getting a clean finish to see who was truly the better man, Brian Pillman jumped the steel railing and randomly got on the ring apron to punch Flair. With the referee's attention turned to Anderson, Pillman would kick the back of Flair's head to allow Anderson to jump up and hit a DDT for the victory. Virtually the same finish as Renegade/DDP, but it means something as Anderson actually pinned Flair and there's some intrigue there as no one understands why Pillman would even interfere. Hell of a match and considering how terrible of a year 1995 was for WCW, it may just be the WCW MOTY. ****



The Hulkamaniacs vs The Dungeon of Doom - War Games
So it's Hogan, Sting, Savage and replacing an A.W.O.L. Vader, Lex Luger. On the Dungeon of Doom side, it's The Shark, Kamala, The Face of Terror Meng and The Zodiac. If Hogan's team wins, Hulk gets Kevin Sullivan alone in the cage. I'll start off by saying this. It's not that the match is bad. The problem is that there isn't anything interesting about the match. It starts with Sting and the ridiculous gimmick of the Shark (They killed any intimidation Earthquake had when they painted shark teeth on his face). From there, Zodiac came in, followed by Randy Savage, Kamala, Lex Luger and Meng. Meng gets in a few great kicks by single handedly beating up the three member's of Hogan's team before the faces came back. When Luger went to closeline Zodiac, but Zodiac collapsed, Luger accidentally closelined Savage from behind. That led to a big brawl with Savage and Luger with Sting having to get between them. When Hogan came in as the final guy, he did what any babyface would do - he threw powder into the eyes of all of the heels. Hogan was the biggest cheater in the entire match! With Savage and Luger back working against the Dungeon, it's easy pickings for the faces until Hogan forces the Zodiac to submit to a sloppy Camel Clutch. Are you kidding me? Out of everyone on Hogan's team that could have gotten the submission victory, it had to be Hogan? FFS, you have two guys on your team that had submissions for finishers. Hell, let Luger get the win to give him that first valuable win since returning to the company. Hogan is so unlikable due to his character being the biggest dick and the booking making him out to be Superman. As I said, it's not a bad match, but literally nothing interesting happens. Normally in these War Games match, you get some minor stories and a few of the wrestlers standing out. Going into the match, The Hulkamaniacs were the obvious favorites and the Dungeon of Doom were never presented as legitimate competition. **



After the match, Sting throws Sullivan into the cage to leave The Taskmaster alone with Hogan. Hogan enjoys a few minutes of beating up Sullivan until the Giant walks down to the ring and into the cage. Hogan tries throwing a couple of punches, but Giant no sells them. Giant does the neck wrench that Zeus had done as 75% of his moveset in 1989. With Sullivan and The Giant escaping the cage, the Hulkamaniacs return, worried about their fallen leader. Michael Buffer calls for some paramedics. Is Hulkamania dead?!

Overall
Fall Brawl 1995 came at an awkward time for WCW. With two episodes of Nitro already airing, the company was changing on a weekly basis, but enough change hadn't happened yet to do a full fledged Nitro era PPV. So what you have is a transitional PPV, going from the Hogan dominance era of the first half of '95 to the Nitro era of pre-nWo. The Renegade's push is officially over and fans that had only began watching WCW on a regular basis with the debut of Nitro wouldn't be subjected to his terrible push. Slater/Buck would be depushed as the tag team scene would change a good deal with teams like The American Males, Public Enemy and The Faces of Fear popping up. The Dungeon of Doom angle may not be finished, sadly, but we're now entering the time period where the Giant becomes the main focus. The pre-show debut of Eddie Guerrero would be the start of the arrival of a few key workers that would help fix the undercard abortion that existed in WCW at this time. From a match quality stand point, the only matches worth watching are Badd/Pillman and Flair/Anderson. Everything else isn't important nor is it good. Considering the fact this is a War Games PPV, the fact that the War Games match didn't deliver is a severe disappointment. Even the disappointing War Games from 1993 and 1994 were vastly superior to this. With that being said, with how terrible 1995 was for WCW, maybe I should just be contend with Fall Brawl '95 since it did have a MOTYC.

 

Observer stuff this week:

- Smackdown to Thursday now isn’t going to happen, although no one is really sure why. It was a SyFy decision. Instead, they’re seemingly trying to build Thursday as an original programming night.

- A long bio on Sean O’Haire. It’s believed to be a suicide, as reports from when they went to press were that he was found with a rope tied around his neck, and no evidence of foul play.

- Reports from Lucha Underground’s first show were pretty negative, as it was described as Wrestling Society X production with Vince Russo style booking. Chavo Guerrero Jr., Konnan, John Morrison, Richochet and Ezekiel Jackson are on the show, but managed to get better deals than everyone else.

- Speaking of Russo, he slagged Spike this week in an interview. Spike’s response was not positive, with a senior vice president responding to PWInsider that Russo “means less to Spike than gum that gets stuck on the bottom of a sneaker.” Russo also reached out to a Cornette intermediary and asked if he would be willing to go on the road to work their feud, but Cornette responded, “I would turn to crime before I helped him make another dime off the wrestling business.”

- It’s believed that negotiations between Spike and TNA have faltered, with the network giving them until around Dec. 31 to find a new home. WGN America and Velocity are two networks that have expressed interest in TNA, although both would be paying far less than the current Spike deal. Expiring talent contracts have only been renewed on a per-date basis as a result.

- In a surprise move, the ROH title was moved from Michael Elgin to Jay Briscoe on Sept. 6. The move was made after Elgin said he was interested in pursuing baseball at some point, and because he let himself get pinned clean in a couple indy spots, even though he’s the ROH champion. Elgin was then stopped at the border for an expired visa, and it’s believed he won’t be allowed back in the US for 90 days.

- Sinclair Broadcasting, the owner of ROH, announced a syndication deal with an Atlanta station, making it the first non-Sinclair station to pick up the show. It is probably the largest station the show is on.

- Thiago Silva was re-hired by UFC, for unknown reasons, given his past domestic assault incidents and failed drug tests. The charges against him were dropped… But probably because his now ex-wife moved back to Brazil.

- At a Sept. 6 show, Jake Roberts said that doctors had found cancer in his chest. It’s unknown how serious it is at this time. He had cancer in his leg earlier this year that was removed without issue.

- Angle is recovering slower than expected from knee surgery, and isn’t expected back until January. His TNA contract expires in two weeks.

- It turns out that Daniel Bryan didn’t need a second surgery, as his shoulder has responded to rehab work. He’s expected back within 3 months.

- Thanks to the presence of Kenta on the roster, NXT will start to be broadcast on a Japanese TV station, J Sports. He’s also been working on his English, and he’s strong enough to do interviews with it, again contrasting vividly from Sin Cara.

- Also, regarding NXT, Triple H compared it to ECW right now, and said that ideally, it would become a touring entity of its own similar to WCW.

- The Hulkamania edition of WWE 2K15 has sold out, and Europe is also doing strong on game sales.

- Following Punk’s lawsuit, maybe the timing was coincidental, but at the WWE Store all of his merchandise was slashed to $3.

- The big names from the most recent WWE tryout in Orlando around Sept. 1 were Jeff Cobb, a former Guam wrestling Olympian who can work with bigger guys and do power slams and shooting star presses, but he’s only 5’10” and 32; and Rich Swann and Nick Ruiz, two good Cali indy wrestlers. On a conference call, Triple H also said that the company is close to signing some former NFL players. In past newsletters, the WWE was said to be targeting guys around age 21 to 27 who were NFL washouts, since if they had the athletic level to get there, it was still higher than most of the wrestlers they had.

- WWE development contracts start at around $24,000 a year, but the price is usually higher if you’re a good to great indy guy – then it can be around $60,000 a year, at the highest end. There are also bumps up if you make it to NXT, and also if you have past high profile experience (TNA, New Japan, pro sports).

 

Anyone else finding the Miz/Dolph feud hilarious? The stunt double thing with Sandow as "Mizdow" was funny enough, but having R-Truth as "R-Ziggler" was fantastic.

JBL: "How can you tell them apart?"
Cole: "At least with Miz and Mizdow, you can clearly see one has a beard."

 

The Fight Network here in Canada carries some wrestling shows amidst its endless MMA crap. They have one show that shows matches from Japan and Mexico but the other night I also discovered TCW - Traditional Championship Wrestling.

The show was a couple of years old (they were reminding everyone to get out and vote in the presidential election) and is as low-rent as can be, filmed - badly - in a rec centre somewhere in front of a disinterested crowd. But I watched the whole thing, if nothing else to get reacquainted with babyface announcer Chris Crouse (seem to remember him from AWA or WCW, the heel colour guy is awesomely terrible), Killer Ken Resnick as the backstage interview guy and watch 90-year-old Ricky Morton win the tag title.

 

There is a long piece on Grantland today about TNA, basically giving an overview of the company's current plight and past success. While it's a little generic in some points, it does get into some specifics I hadn't seen before about the tension between Jarrett and Dixie Carter, and it's a good read overall: http://grantland.com/features/tna-professional-wrestling-dixie-carter-jeff-jarrett-wwe/

 

Bray Wyatt was in character on a morning TV show Monday before Raw, and it is glorious.

http://www.brobible.com/entertainment/article/bray-wyatt-morning-show-appearance/

 

Morton's still wrestling? Holy shit. I met him when I was 7 or 8.